Liz Field and her husband want Cian to go into reception rather than year 1 when he turns five in August as he is young for his age group and has developmental problems.
Photograph: Alecsandra Raluca Dragoi for the Guardian

At about 4pm in a bright, airy south London home, Liz Field jumps up to get the door as her four-year-old son Cian returns from nursery.

“Hey, big guy! How’re you doing?”

“I’m well, thank you,” Cian replies carefully while wrestling his arm out of a bright-yellow raincoat.

Cian will turn five on 30 August – so he must legally start school in September. But because he is young for his age group and has developmental problems, his parents want him to go into reception rather than into year 1, which technically he should do.

Field, who is originally from the US, says she thought a request to Lambeth council for Cian to be taught with children who would be five in the next school year, rather than those who would soon be six, would be a straightforward matter. But it was rejected. When we met, he was still without a school place for September.

The family believe they have been victims of a widespread problem – that summer-born children are too often being denied the flexibility they’re supposed to have under a government code of conduct.

“I thought it would be like the American system, where people would be looking at Cian’s best interests,” Field says. “ I didn’t realise the needs of the system were so important here.”

Meanwhile, Cian chats away happily about his day at nursery and about how he expects to go to big school soon, apparently blissfully unaware that the subject of “big school” is causing a big headache for his parents.

Cian was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum last year, and although he can keep up with his peers in some areas – his number skills are fine, for instance – he didn’t eat independently until he was four and his motor skills are poor.

His nursery agreed to keep him for an extra year, and his parents applied for him to enter reception class this year. But their application to their nearest school – in Lambeth, even though they live just over the border in Southwark – was rejected by a panel on children’s medical or social needs.

An application to a second school in Southwark was treated with more sympathy, Field says, but the council didn’t pass it to the school until the deadline for applications had passed.

“If he goes into year 1, it’s just going to widen the attainment gaps between him and his peers,” she says. “He can’t write his own name, and he would be in a class with children who are writing sentences.”

The treatment of summer-born children is an issue on which MPs and ministers have voiced concerns: there’s long been a recognition that children born in summer tend to lag behind their peers academically and socially. And although schools and councils are meant to be flexible and to act in the child’s best interests, there’s a feeling bureaucratic concerns tend to take precedence.

There seemed to be a growing problem, he said – despite new guidance issued by the Department for Education in December 2014, which said such decisions must be taken on a case-by-case basis.

“We heard during the session that parents are having increasing difficulty in securing entry for summer-born or premature children into reception at compulsory school age rather than into year 1, and that the situation has worsened following the government’s new guidance,” Stuart wrote.

And Stuart’s concern was shared by ministers. Gibb himself told the committee that school admissions authorities should not reject parents’ requests through a desire for “bureaucratic neatness”.

“Their overriding concern should be flexibility and taking into account the parents’ genuine concerns about the maturity of their child … That is a mindset we have to change, I think,” he said.

Meanwhile, some parents continue to feel they are in a postcode lottery, with some councils happy to be flexible and others less so.

Susan King, from Norfolk, now educates her son Tom at home after battling for him to be kept back a year. Tom, who was born on 28 August 2005, still struggled to dress himself when he started primary school a few days after his fifth birthday.

Although Tom was formally admitted to year 1, the headteacher agreed to have him taught with the reception pupils, his mother says. But a year later, a new head insisted he should move straight into year 2.

Tom cried every morning and often refused to go into class: “He had to be put out in the corridor to do his work. He was kept in at break time if he didn’t get three sentences written in an hour. At home he had nightmares and started suffering from headaches,” King says. “We feel lost in the system.” When Tom was in year 4, his parents decided to take him out of school.

Some parents continue to feel they are in a postcode lottery, with some councils more happy to be flexible than others

A spokeswoman for Norfolk county council said it had made clear to Tom’s parents that he would progress as and when the school felt best. “Schools work tirelessly to ensure that pupils develop appropriately, and are best placed to differentiate the delivery of the curriculum to support each child’s development,” she said.

Meanwhile in Hampshire, Georgie Armstrong’s son Max has had no such problem. Max, who will be five on 24 June, will enter the reception class of his local school in September. “I couldn’t quite believe how easy it was,” Armstrong says. “I just had to send an email explaining that my son was summer-born. I didn’t need to give them any reason – that was it. He’ll start in reception when he’s five years and two months.”

Pauline Hull, who runs the Summer Born Campaign and who recently gave evidence to the parliamentary education committee on the subject, believes the government’s new code has made matters worse rather than better. The wording of the code should be more specific, she says – it’s too easy for any local authority to say it has made a decision in a child’s best interests.

Her own request for her son Jack, who was born in May 2009, to enter the reception class at a Roman Catholic school in Surrey was refused. In the end, her family – coincidentally – emigrated to Canada just before the date in September last year when he was due to start school.

There, she says, Jack will stay in kindergarten until this September, by which time he will be six. “I can’t tell you how different, culturally, it is here,” she says over the phone from her new home in Alberta. “They don’t talk about delaying the child’s starting date – they talk about starting when they’re ready.”

Back in Southwark, Cian’s parents are still frustrated by their experience. Just after being contacted by the Guardian about the case, Southwark told the family it would allow Cian to be admitted to a reception class – but it could only offer a place at a school his parents felt was too far from home. He would now be put on a waiting list for his parents’ preferred school, the council said.

Southwark’s cabinet member for children and schools, Victoria Mills, said the authority understood the need for flexibility. “We’re very happy to work with families to ensure the best outcome for the child,” she said.

Lambeth declined to comment on the family’s concerns, but said its decisions were made on a case-by-case basis.

Field has contacted the DfE to complain that Lambeth has not fulfilled its obligation to give reasons for its decision not to admit Cian to a reception class, but she has been told to pursue the issue locally.

The DfE said parents who were unhappy about decisions on their summer-born children could complain to the local government ombudsman, or, in the case of academies, to the Education Funding Agency. But Field is not happy with this.

“If a local authority isn’t meeting aspects of the admissions code, what’s the comeback?” she asks. “What does the Department for Education do? The answer to that is still a bit of an unknown – and what’s the point of having a code if it’s not enforced?”